An Endcap

Since this is the last entry in my blogg for my Teaching Lit. to Adolescents class, and perhaps the last time I ever look upon this page or these words, I find a sort of end cap necessary. I do realize that my journal has been a bit sporadic and at times off of the mark... but for that I blame my recent movement away from a future in Education. Keeping this journal up to date was a struggle in and of itself.

Which brings me nicely to my first point, and that is a critique of the blogg and the RSS reader. Firstly, before this class I had never come in contact with the concept of the RSS feed and it was completely new to me. I have never been much of a fan of reading the news and current events. I am of the persuasion that television news is biased entertainment whose primary mission is to amass more viewers, and not to present relevant and unbiased news information. This would account for the prevalence of news stories featuring more and more ways for Americans to justify their fear, violence, hatred, perpetuation of the schism in social class, and plain good ol' ignorance. Internet news has never been high on my radar of relevance either, and this is largely due to my disheartening experience with the sheer volume of rumor, bias, and unsubstantiated opinion that circulates around on the internet. Not to mention that I feel (perhaps inaccurately) that any "expert" providing commentary on a subject is dubbed "expert" due to their extreme preference for and subsequent research into only one side of an issue. But I'm being caustic here... and pessimistic.

In actuality, my aversion to news on the internet was probably due to the staggering task of sifting through endless reports and articles just so that I could find the couple things that really interested me. The RSS feed allowed me to tap into what I eventually had to convince myself were accurate and unbiased sources where I could specify exactly what kind of information I wanted to receive.

I must admit, though censorship is an issue that is important to me, it certainly isn't a central theme to my life (and incidentally, nether is education anymore). This made my searches through the generally robust list of articles my feed produced for me more of a chore than an interested search. However, I did find an appreciation for the power of the feed. I certainly began to notice the RSS symbol on webpages where I never would have seen them before.

I eventually began to use my feed for other features: RSSing my popular searches for torrents of information that I was looking for, or RSSing whole webpages so I would be notified whenever they updated. Though I do admit that I hardly ever check my feed now that the class is ending, I do not deny the power that the RSS has, and the efficacy the tool would have had for me if I was more inclined to spend more of my life online.

This did bring up an interesting feeling in me though... a new feeling of empowerment... a new resource or tool that I knew I could use in the future. I wondered about this feeling and the positive benefits of giving this feeling (or more importantly, this technological knowledge) to children in schools. I would digress here about why I think technology is immensely important to a growing and learning student, but I feel I have elaborated at length on the subject in my Gates' Lecture response below, and so won't reiterate myself again here.


The blogg was a bit of a different story for me. Once again, I feel that the change in mindset for me, away from the goals and ideals of this course, made the journal lose a bit of its spark for me. I, for one, love journaling. Ever since I was introduced through my now ex-girlfriend back in highschool to the concept of a LiveJournal (which, in retrospect, probably should have been a DeadJournal due to its early - and I suppose current - content), online journaling and I have had a torrid and tumultuous love-hate relationship. I very much enjoy journaling, though may agree more so with Marilyn Manson on the subject:

"People don't keep journals for themselves. They keep them for other people, like a secret they don't want to tell but they want everyone to know. The only safe place for your thoughts is your memory, which people can't take and read when you're not looking - at least not yet. I'm starting to think that if the Internet is the CB radio of the nineties, then the home computer is the trailer park of the soul, a dangerous tool in the hands of idiots. Eventually self-imposed fascism will destroy man as he convinces himself he doesn't have to think anymore."

Though I perhaps don't completely share Marilyn Manson's familiar Apocalyptic pessimism, I do agree that people don't keep journals for themselves. They keep them for other people... especially journals online. I was in denial about this fact for a very long time back in highschool. I figured that I didn't care whether people read my journal or not, and if they were offended or worried about what it contained... well, they were the ones clicking on the link, and they were the ones choosing to read, so it was their fault. However, I later (much later) realized that if I didn't care whether or not people read what I was writing, then why would I incessantly post on my LiveJournal, just to see what kind of comments people would post... the same comments that eventually would fuel a bitter fire of resentment and depression that I was "misunderstood." It was a call for understanding and attention while simultaneously demanding to be left alone. This relationship wasn't dichotomous... it was just denial.

Which brings me, in a kind of round about way-too-much-info-about-myself way to the bloggs in this class.

I think that an important aspect of the online journals should be the fact that other students are reading them. As a matter of fact, I would encourage you to place within the blogg grade of your class, the fact that students actually read other students journals and comment on them. I felt that this was an area that was sorely missing in the whole concept. When first beginning my journal, I remember checking back a couple of times a day to see if anybody had responded to what I had written... to agree or disagree or correct. But nobody did... Not a single comment. And if it wasn't for your brief comments tacked on to the rubric of the assignment (well after the fact of the writing itself, and not specific enough to relate to any one article) I would have had no indication that ANYONE was reading what I was posting. It began to feel like an act of futility... like I was throwing away my words. When I post to my other journal, it functions as a sort of online bulletin board of my creative endeavors (which, of course, are mostly literal). My small "fanbase" accesses them, occasionally comments on them, and talks about them to me later. This process provides energy for me to keep writing. More importantly though, it makes me want to write better. Because the more people you have honestly reading exactly what words you write and thinking about them critically, the more you're going to think about them and the more effort and thoughtfulness you're going to put into it.

Make the blogging experience more communal.


I would say that I think that blogging and RSS feeding in a highschool setting would be incredibly beneficial, if I didn't believe that serious problems inherently lie in the medium itself. As technology has improved, there also grows a greater and greater tendency to misuse and abuse it. Providing children with computers and asking them to do assignments is like giving a hungry artist a piece of cake and telling them to draw it. Eventually the system is going to break down for the more primal (and in the former case, I mean hedonistic) tendencies. I fear that giving students access to e-mail accounts, would make them want to check those e-mail accounts... all of the time... while class should be going on and they should be paying attention. Incorporating community read blogging experiences has wonderful implications which I believe we addressed in class (linked poetry exercise)... but it also could generate a lot of needless gossip and escalate tensions. (I won't get into this here, as I could at length, but I will say this: bloggs are incredibly powerful because they give their users a false sense of anonymity. It allows students to say whatever they want without a face, a voice, or in some cases even a name attached to it. There's no immediate response to be withstood, and denial can make for interesting situations were a student can say, "well yeah, I wrote that about her... but I didn't think she read my journal.)

Let me try to generalize here: I believe there is always inherent difficulty in giving new technology to students because, simply, it generates the desire to use it for other purposes than for the ones intended. I remember when I was in my Computer class in highschool, when we were supposed to be designing a webpage for some project we were working on, I ended up slagging the project and almost failing it so that I could design and maintain a picture archive site, hosted by my school, for screenshots of my favorite game at the time: MechWarrior II.

Even now, maintaining this blogg and using my RSS feed at the ripe old age of 22, and in college and everything, I found it very difficult to keep myself on task, as may be apparent in the meandering and overly elaborate way this final post is weaving itself out of my fingertips as I type here.

For future reference, make sure you tell your students (as I believe you did tell us) to blogg about something that is important to them... something that they want to learn more about, or something that they are passionate about. I eventually found myself gravitating towards censorship and book banning because it struck a chord in me, as someone who has always been a purveyor of literature which has offended or pissed off someone at some time, much to my mother's chagrin, amongst others. I believe even this journal for school did not escape a couple of cuss words intermingled with impassioned tirades about censorship and the way I'd raise my child if I had the enormous responsibility of bringing up a potential serial killer or president of the United States.


1) Make sure people blogg about what is important to them on a personal or scholarly level.
2) Make the blogging experience communal. Encourage or even require that people post comments on other people's journals. Make comments yourself.
3) Usable examples for how to utilize the RSS feed I think would have helped many students for which the concept was foreign (including me). For example, give a handout detailing a step-by-step on how to get each type of source you wanted our RSS feeds to search in. Make these examples in your handout ACTUAL SITES and searches that your students could use if they wanted to.


I would hope that my comments are well received, as are my entries within this blogg. I will be the first to admit that I'm not exactly the most intelligent person when it comes to detail in my arguments. In a way, perhaps I am a quintessential and aggrandized example of the average American: stubborn, opinioned, vitriolic, and ultimately uninformed. Being an ex-Philosophy major (I hope my marital relationships don't follow the pattern of my affinity for dropping majors here at GVSU), I tend to take things in generalities and argue on the principal of things, rather than on specific events or rather than citing specific examples. The flaw of any great philosophy is that it is completely un-empirical and too beautifully amorphous to be testable. But once again, I'm speaking in generalities, and could be spouting wholly unfounded jargon. Perhaps I have a future in politics.

This entire experience has helped me focus though, and I cannot be grateful enough for the new ability to sift through the endless amount of data on the internet and find only what I'm truly interested in. It's a tool that I will definitely use in the future. I hope that my comments here and in class have been worthwhile... pessimistic as they often are coming from the dark corner of yet another chronically depressed Devil's advocate. Though my path has since diverted from the goals and aspirations I feel the course is reaching towards, I am genuinely grateful for ability to at once be a member of a group, and then to be suddenly thrust outside of it, yet still with foot or two within... like a football player catching a touchdown pass in the end-zone right as he's falling out of bounds, praying his toes touch the turf long enough to score the points he needs.

Hey, if the catch looks cool and counts... they all celebrate in the end anyway.

Response to the Gates lecture

I listened to a recording of the Henry Louis Gates lecture (which Bethany was so kind to endow me with).

I am torn here whether to write on what he talked about during the lecture (the history and formation of the Encyclopedia Africano) or the digital-divide. However, as my knowledge is severely limited on the former subject, and I'm opinionated on the latter, I will address the digital-divide.

Gates mentioned in his presentation a brief bit where he went to Microsoft with the project and they told him that they needed to conduct a survey to find whether enough Black families owned a computer (and thus a market would exist for the encyclopedia). Gates didn't reveal the exact numbers (as perhaps they weren't revealed to him) but I was curious as to what criteria Microsoft had for Gates to get his thumbs-up.

I was also somewhat miffed at the implication that only Black individuals would be interested in the Encyclopedia Africano. I for one am very interested in Black culture (particularly how they have progressed from their customs in Africa, to their progression through slavery, to their portrayal now in the media and the culture-gap between Black and White America now). I might really enjoy the Encyclopedia Africano. Perhaps DuBios had was a bit on the mark when he said that information would be what changed minds. I for one and very ignorant and inexperienced with the Black race, and perhaps a bit of information would do me good. However, I'm sure any self-respecting Black individual would tell me that sitting in an air-conditioned room reading an entry of the Encyclopedia Africano spinning from a CD in the computer my parents bought for me is a poor excuse to growing up and out of the ghetto or living on the streets.

I'm not sure how the digital-divide works across the different factors which divide students: race, gender, SES, and geographic location. I do know that there IS a divide though.

A part of me wants to reject new technology's place in the classroom like I am inclined to reject the newest teaching method to hit the market sans-empirical validation through testing. If there's anything that left-brain right-brain transfer and facilitated communication have taught me, it's that the newest strategies and methods certainly don't make them the best ones. The same thing applies to software. The newest program could look very nice and be marveled to work well... but the first release is usually the one with the most bugs as well.

However, (thinking of Gates' Encyclopedia here) I can remember sitting on my computer for hours as a child, looking up entries on my Encyclopedia Britannica '95 edition CD-ROM. Everything from sting rays and ballistic missiles, to lymph-nodes and moving maps of civil war battles. There were also games within the software which I played that were maze-like, offering clues at each turn which you could research with the CD-ROM to find your way through. Looking back on it now, I can't believe that the "teaching" implications for it actually worked on me. I had no idea that I was learning. As far as I was concerned, I was playing a fun game with a wizard, not leafing through the pages of an Encyclopedia.

I also think of how much I've taken the internet for granted. I grew up in a household that has always had computers and the internet (my father is an electronic engineer) and so I forget just how much of the information I have acquired has passed through that fiber-optic line. In middle and high school, the internet was invaluable (as well as my Encyclopedia Britannica and the New Grolier’s Encyclopedia both on CD-ROM) for projects and reports. Since then, I've always been a bit pissed off when I have been *required* to use a physical source (like a real book) to cite when writing papers or doing projects. I always had to go out of my way to actually find a book, and then awkwardly work a citation or two somewhere into the paper.

My sight is very narrow here. It is difficult for me to understand how someone could not know how to use a search engine... utilize e-mail to send files back and forth, set up RSS feeds, search within sites, and find online searchable versions of texts and books. Such a skill is the epitome of the information age with its superhighway... and it seems like a dream that there are those that don't have it, or don't know how to get it.

I always think that most local libraries must have computers for students to use. But even these must have limited or restricted access to sites, not to mention some may lack spreadsheet software or even word processors.

There is inherent difficulty in creating a curriculum which utilizes technology when individuals or the school is severely limited in funding and know-how. However, as schools are supposed to be preparation for the "real world" a.k.a. a college education, and then the workforce, teaching how to properly use the internet, e-mail, and at least word processors seems essential for preparing children for life.

The effort, I feel, must lie in the teacher. I have always believed that where there is a will, there is a way... and by will, I mean pig-headed, stubborn, like a donkey that won't budge determinism (like Gates told about in effort to get the Encyclopedia Africano into production). I feel that if teachers look hard enough and are willing to invest their time and a bit of money into it, technology can be at least introduced into the classroom to get kids started on it. In the meantime, I don't see where funding is going to come from to bridge the digital-divide.

I feel there may be more things involved than just a surplus and void of technology. I think of it like the food problem. I have often heard it said that Americans *throw away* enough food to feed every hungry person on the planet. The problem is, getting that food to them. Food is distributed in surplus to specific areas where demand is higher as well as money to spend. Then there's issues of transportation... It would be getting a lot of people to chip in in a small way that would make a difference... but such a great change of mind or heart for so many people seems impossible.